Remember how the majority of same-sex-marriage cases cited his Windsor dissent in their arguments? (I wrote Scalia a sepielle about it here.) Roberts did the same thing this time, citing Scalia at least twice (I’ll have to read it again) to argue that the court is obliged to look at the whole law, and not quibble over a single phrase taken out of context.

So what we end up with is… Scalia arguing against Scalia. A supreme snarkfest.

Related

Comments

I liked Roberts’ description of the ACA document as “inartful”. Design by committee usually turns out badly. When this whole controversy started, I had several thoughts. The first, which may be the least likely, is that it was written quickly by someone whose logic was not that good and they just didn’t express themselves correctly. This however seems to be the tack that Roberts, et al, have taken with their “inartful” comment. Or, relatedly, it may have been a direction that one group of drafters were going in while another group took a different direction. Then, much like “Cdesign proponentist”, they missed some stuff when they edited the document. My second thought was that it was worded that way on purpose, was meant to be an inducement to the States to set up their own exchanges, otherwise their citizens would lose out on the subsidies, and was passed as legislation with the expectation that it would be enforced. This seemed most likely to me, although it gives a lot more credit to legislators than I usually give them. And, if this is the actual reason for the wording, then the Roberts decision is wrong and sets bad precedent (even though it avoids some damaging results). The real remedy is for Congress to change the wording and repass the legislation.
In any case, the decision doesn’t effect me. We live in Florida, which chose not to set up a State exchange, and my wife has ACA coverage, but she didn’t qualify for a subsidy so whether they stay in place or not doesn’t change our cost.

Actually, I think the third line ‘Justice Scalia is’ would scan better with ‘Scalia’ starting on the fourth syllable for the beat, so perhaps as ‘Antonin Scalia’s’ (or ‘Antonin Scalia is’ while pronouncing Scalia with two syllables more like Scal-ya).

(Normally in Double Dactyls the subject is the second line, not the third, but that’s getting too pedantic.)